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I just bent a set of waterfall Bubinga into an S-shaped cutaway. They have gone through a cooldown, and a second heating session, and are still in the bender. (This is a silicone blanket system.)

The cutaway is pretty close, but not snug with the mold. There's about an 1/8" gap between the sandwich and the form. With springback, it will probably be a bit worse than that. The cutaway is quite a bit smaller diameter than my bending iron, so I'd have to improvise a new small diameter hot pipe for touch up...

or...

What about the idea of re-wetting, and rebending the bent sides, only this time, eliminate the spring steel that was below the wood?

I used 3 pieces of spring steel for the initial bending. Worked great for the upper (non-cutaway) side, but was probably too restrictive for the cutaway side. My setup was:

bending form, then:

.012" spring steel
wet paper
wet wood
wet paper
.012" spring steel
silicone heating blanket
.012" spring steel


And I'm thinking of refining the bend with this setup:

bending form, then:

wet paper
wet wood
wet paper
.012" spring steel
silicone heating blanket

Does this sound like it would work? Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dennis

_________________
Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

     Can you get the wood to shape in the mold with a little pressure? I personally don't use cutaway molds anymore. I figure if the side is attached to the neck block and the side is blocked to the mold I just let the cutaway flow on its own. I have split a few trying to get them perfect and as a result fixed it till it broke.
     Babinga ,next to paduk is one of the hardest woods to bend well. Higher figured babinga is a real test of patience and skill.
   If you are going to fret over the smaller radius , you may need to touch up on a bending iron.
John Hall
   Take it slow as the wood fibers need to compress to allow bending

Thanks, John.

I'll pull it out of the mold, and see how much it springs, to get a better idea of what it needs. (Maybe it "needs" to be left alone, as you suggest, to avoid breaking it.) I have a female mold for this, with integrated cutout as well, so I may not be able to get it into that mold if I don't get the curves to where they were supposed to go.

So far, I am pretty thrilled not to have cracked the Bubinga.

Dennis

_________________
Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia